I wonder about some things in the political blogosphere.  You can’t deny that Kos of dailykos is partisan, and a booster of the Democratic Party.  You also cannot deny that he’s conscious of the way anything published on his website can be used against the Democratic Party — as he is now a fund raising conduit.  There is an element of self-censorship that he’s developed: he quickly deleted a controverisal post damning corporate contractors in Iraq (a more hostile word would be “mercenaries”), which was grist for the Tom Coburn campaign in 2004 — “Brad Carson is supported by radical left bloggers who want our troops dead” — and is being used by Joseph Lieberman against Ned Lamont in a campaign flyer.

He also has a stated policy of deleting anything that ventures into 9/11 conspiracy.  Granted, you don’t have to defend this as part of staying on the political straight and narrow, but it’s hard for me not to see some “we don’t want dailykos used as opposition attacks” in play.

There are limits to any respectable partisan booster — a point at which to push forth in a purely partisan vein makes you nothing but a propagandist and thus makes your website pointless.  It’s not even the proverbial thin line.  Witness Kos “Giving up on Tennessee”.  He sees the situation in the Tennessee election, and has given a negative assessment of what is happening.  I note his next post pertained to Montana — which was “productively cautious” and a partisan call to action– in short, mixed news.

To do anything else would be to act like the DSCC website, which in 2004 kept up a favorable poll result from September concerning that Carson — Coburn race even as less favorable results were published.

Some commentors in that post — aghast reaction that he would be demoralizing the troops — seems to me a poor reflection on these blog readers.  What, oh, what, do you want of your leading partisan Democratic blog?  Happiness all around?  Joseph Lieberman tells us that there are a record number of cell phones in Iraq!  How’s that for good news?  Moralize yourself!  Ford will win if there’s a big enough “tsunami”, which there may be, and I guess the “troops” should prepare themselves for that event.

Maybe Kos could just refrain from commenting on Tennessee, leave it conspicuously absent as he does a few focuses on Arizona, and prepare a post-mortem analysis to be published after the election.  Is that what they want?

Maybe this reaction on my part is uncalled for.  I neglected to read comments — which I rarely do simply because of time consumed, just as I largely just scan blogs — in 2004 of the same sort about Daschle, Kentucky, and Louisiana.  Maybe they were there, maybe Kerry v Bush just sucked out that oxygen and they were not there.

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